


Take It In But Don't Look Down

by Mia_Zeklos



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-SPECTRE, SPECTRE Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5418851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_Zeklos/pseuds/Mia_Zeklos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Revelations and confessions are made and James Bond pours his soul out to a cat. Takes place post-Spectre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take It In But Don't Look Down

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from. I do hope you enjoy it, though, because I’m still very much new to writing this ship and opinions would be appreciated.

 “That’s good,” M nodded under James’s questioning gaze. “ _Very_ good, I might add, and definitely much better than last time.”

“Last time I had several bullets still stuck in my chest,” James reminded him gruffly and the man tossed the test results on his desk.

“Well, we’re done here, then,” he said as if it should have been obvious. “Welcome back, 007.”

“Wait, that’s it?” He’d expected to be scolded, or at least have his sudden disappearance mentioned.

“Would you like a mission?” M looked a bit lost and not at all sure what he was supposed to be doing. “If that’s it, then I could think of about ten places I could send you to right now, but I’m afraid there’s no one to equip you for it until tomorrow morning. Q went home hours ago.”

James felt as if his eyebrows were about to disappear into his hairline. No one had been the least bit surprised to see him; there had been no shouting, no rants about how important his job was and how he couldn’t just leave when he felt like it. It was as if he’d went to take a vacation and had been expected back within the week; as if he’d been given all the physical tests and the Psych evaluation just because it was the regular way to do things after an especially draining mission.

Well, he wasn’t about to _complain_ about the lack of disappointed stares and speeches on how irresponsible he was, so he just nodded and left M’s office. If he wanted answers, then he’d have to look for them elsewhere.

*******

It was ridiculously easy to find out what Q’s address was - the strangest thing about it all was that it was virtually impossible to dig out his name, but his exact address was in his file for everyone to see – and even easier to force his way in. It was five in the morning and James had no intention of waking him up just to ask his questions; not when he himself had so much to think about.

So he cleared up the sofa from all the clutter and half-finished technology that was cluttering it and sank into its softness, closing his eyes as he felt the night breeze coming from the window wash over him. It was a relief after a week in one of what had to be the warmest places on Earth; a remote beach in the middle of nowhere where no one could possibly find them.

Or so he’d thought. It had turned out on the first night that James had far more enemies than he’d liked to believe and he had to admit that he’d known that in some small part of his mind – it was the reason he’d brought his gun when he’d sped off with Madeleine. Thinking back on it, it was absurd – how he’d even dared to think that he could just dash off and be free of everything his life had been up to that point.

And that, of course, didn’t just mean the bad things. He’d always enjoyed a holiday, but this time it had had a finality about it that he didn’t really like; he found himself thinking more and more about the fact that even if and when he managed to take out every single one of the people who wanted him dead, he’d live the rest of his life like this – in the absolute calmness of the world; the way that civilians saw it – untroubled and quiet and everything that it actually wasn’t.

James was taken out of his thoughts when he felt movement near his feet and then saw the small house cat that had climbed up on the couch. The alert he’d felt for a second or two faded as he snorted – _of course_ Q would pick out a cat that looked disagreeable and persistent but was in fact kind of endearing – and put down on the ground. It climbed back up without a moment of hesitation and he rolled his eyes.

“Piss off,” he muttered and tried to chase it away, but it didn’t budge. He sighed pointedly and turned to the side, watching as the cat jumped off of him gracelessly and landed on the floor. The last thing he needed was cat hair on his bespoke suit, he thought as he tried to get his mind back to everything that happened.

It had taken him a week. A week of several attacks and many thoughts on both the past and the future before James had realised that this couldn’t really work; before he’d left a note on Madeleine’s nightstand to apologise and explain to her everything that he was sure she would understand. He’d been in the same position before – the memory of all the hope he’d had with Vesper stabbed him like a bullet shot into an old wound; the pain was dull and familiar – and it had never worked out. It never worked out, so why did he even keep–

He groaned when he felt the cat’s soft steps on the sofa for the nth time and sat up to gather it into his lap. He was trying to clear his head for the first time in months and the damn beast wouldn’t leave him alone for a minute; how did Q even put up with these creatures?

“The point to this, you stubborn little shit,” he started snappishly as the cat blinked slowly up at him, “is that you’ll have to give up eventually. What is the point to keep trying when you always fail? At some point you’ll just have to...” His own words sank into his mind as he felt his grip around the animal loosening. It didn’t flee like he’d expected it to; it just curled in his lap with a purr of contentment. “...give up,” he finished. “At some point you’ll just have to give up.”

That was his problem, James realised. He kept trying. He kept reaching out for something that wasn’t really there; the ghost of a life he would never have and had never really wanted. And his own life – his own mind, probably – kept putting him down.

M was probably wrong. His results from Psych had to have been disastrous if he was entertaining the thought of being a cat on the sofa of life at five in the morning in his Quartermaster’s apartment.

Or maybe he just needed sleep. That had to be it; he’d slept for about twelve hour in total for the last two weeks, so it was only normal that his mind refused to reevaluate his life just now. Maybe he’d talk to Q tomorrow morning and sort everything out, but for now, a bit of rest was in order.

*******

Q was the first to admit that he handled technology better than he handled people, and yet there was one thing he didn’t doubt about himself in that department – he could always tell when he wasn’t alone.

And the moment he woke up, he knew that there was someone in his flat. Not in his room, no; but somewhere nearby definitely, and that was never a good thing with the life he had.

He wasn’t sure how he could tell, exactly – there was something in the air that spoke of someone else’s presence and he could ignore it. It was probably something harmless – like yet another of the double-oh agents pestering him for something they wanted done – and yet he got out of the bed as quietly as possible and took a look out of the window for any telling signs of who the unwanted guest was. His eyes widened as he saw the one thing dominating the street outside.

There she was – his beauty; the car he’d given up with no enthusiasm whatsoever with the clear realisation that James fucking Bond would crash her somewhere within the next few days – and he was pleasantly surprised to see that there wasn’t anything dramatically wrong with her. Well, there were three holes that couldn’t have been left by anything other than bullets, but he was inclined to let that pass if it could still function.

And the presence of that car left no doubt as to the nature of this visit, Q thought mournfully. He’d long since resigned himself to his fate – he would do pretty much everything Bond asked from him, as if that wasn’t glaringly obvious already – and he grimly wondered what the hell the matter was now. Did he need a passport? A new gun, if he’d lost the last one? Maybe he wanted to have the car fixed. Really, Q thought sardonically, Bond wouldn’t mind squeezing everything he could out of him. He knew what he was doing, the bastard, and it had never stopped him; not once in all the time they’d known each other, because he was–

–asleep.

Q stopped dead in his tracks and whatever he’d had to say died on his lips as he stared at the tall figure that had propped itself over his sofa. He felt like a mouse that had escaped all the predators of the forest only to come home and find a lion in the heart of said home, even if James looked strangely harmless this way. Suzie had curled up on his stomach and seemed to enjoy the warmth he was giving off.

 _James_. He wasn’t sure how the name had slipped into his mind. He didn’t think like that; couldn’t afford to, not with the double-ohs, anyway. They were just numbers, names on a screen that he didn’t want to connect to real people in any way. They didn’t die as easily or as often as everyone seemed to think – they _were_ perfectly trained, after all – but they had more near-death experiences than he could count. The one who had been there the longest – 009, who’d had the status for nearly twenty years – was a perfect example of that. They seemed to be immortal, or at least thought themselves to be, and Q was honestly so _tired_ of worrying about them.

But this particular one was different, and Q knew it. He’d been different ever since day one and now here he was; asleep on Q’s sofa like he belonged there and like he hadn’t vanished off the face of the planet not a week ago. Even like that – relaxed and lost in deep sleep – he seemed ridiculously large and his body still resembled a well-oiled machine whose spring never really uncoiled. Damn it all to hell, despite all of the pent up anger and frustration, Q couldn’t help but feel his heart melt just a little bit. He couldn’t understand it – there was nothing he was supposed to find appealing about graceless approach to everything in the man’s way and the single-minded determination to do what he thought was right, but that seemed to be exactly the case.

That was probably at least part of the reason why he opted for waking him up gently. The other was that he had seen the man’s reflexes in action and didn’t want to get shot because he’d startled him at the wrong moment.

“Bond,” he said, shaking his shoulder just enough to rouse him gradually. “Bond, wake up.”

He stirred slightly and there was half an instant of confusion in those unbelievably blue eyes before they cleared and focused on him. He sat up and knocked the cat off, much to her chagrin, running a hand through his short blond hair. It looked copper in the light of the sunrise and Q felt his breath catch in his throat. “Oh,” he said, and it was kind of endearing, everything else considered. “Q, I was– I wanted to ask– I went to see M – I’m back on field duty, by the way – and he just let me in.” When Q didn’t react in any way, he tried to empathise his point. “He wasn’t at all surprised that I was there; he just got me through the tests and–”

“Of course he wasn’t,” Q said irritably, trying to cover the fact that he’d been staring in mute admiration while the other man was trying to gather his wits. “I told him you’d gone on a vacation.”

“You did _what_?” Bond seemed altogether too scandalised by the news which had clearly only been in his convenience so far. “How did you know I was coming back?”

“You’re always coming back,” Q said, looking down as to avoid the questions in the agent’s eyes. “You can’t live without this, so I don’t know who you’re trying to fool, really, because it’s not like– Well, you’re back, aren’t you?” he challenged, just a bit flustered by the smile playing on Bond’s lips. “I was right, so there’s nothing to fuss about anymore.”

“No, there isn’t,” Bond decided as he sprung up to his feet. That infuriating half-smile was back – the smile that always said he would do whatever he liked in the way he liked it – and Q rather liked seeing it just now. “But why would you do it? I gave you no reason to help me anymore than you did?”

“What did you want me to tell them?” Q asked as he plopped down in one of his kitchen chairs and started to make himself breakfast and put the kettle on, trying to ignore Bond’s eyes on him. “That I’ve let their best agent get off just like that and sent him off with equipment – up to an including a _car_ – for millions of pounds? The best thing that could happen to me is death, the worst is treason, and–”

“And?” Bond raised an inquisitive eyebrow and Q found himself unable not to respond under the quiet scrutiny. It was the worst thing of all – he just assumed that people would do everything to please him and they did, not because it was easy or they got anything out of it, but because he wanted it.

“And I knew you would come back,” he blurted out. “There was no point of complicating the lives of half of MI6 just to have you come back in a week.”

“You were right,” Bond said, following his example and Q frowned as he watched him rummage through his food is if it were his own and pour himself hot water too. In Q’s favourite mug, no less, and he minded even more because of the simplicity of the action. It was as if he thought he could just insert himself back into someone’s life like he’d never left. His irritation softened only mildly when he saw that there was something like regret in Bond’s eyes; something that almost looked like an unsaid apology. Q knew that it was the most that he could get from him and he didn’t intend on missing on that chance. “I’m not leaving now and when I am, it’s probably going to be because I’m dead.”

“Glad to hear that, Bond,” he said mildly and put one sugar in his mug, “but I like my morning tea just a dash less morbid, so please shut up.”

“Of course,” he nodded dutifully, assuming the air of a schoolboy who’d just been scolded by his teacher. “But... thank you.”

“Whatever for, Bond?” Q asked, finally looking up. There was a lot he could be thanked for, in his own humble opinion, but he wasn’t used to actually getting that gratitude. He didn’t request it from any of the agents – what would be the point? It was all in his job description, wasn’t it?

“For everything,” Bond said and Q startled as he felt a heavy, large hand land on his shoulder. “And for not throwing me out after I broke into your house.”

“Be my guest,” Q waved him off. He’d resigned to his fate a long time ago, but there was something different now; there was hope that things were going to change. “And I mean that, Bond; feel free to ask for anything you need.”

“I’m glad you said that,” Bond said cheerfully, leaning over the counter. “Because M offered me a few things I could start on tomorrow morning, and I remember that prototype you were talking about–”

Q groaned. Realistically, he knew that Bond could never shut up – not for long, anyway – but surprisingly, he didn’t mind one bit.


End file.
